I can see a gusher from my house

Pooor Barack. Even his most finger in the wind defenders are unhappy with him. Peggy Noonan: He Was Supposed to Be Competent The spill is a disaster for the president and his political philosophy:

I don't see how the president's position and popularity can survive the oil spill. This is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office. And they were all, as they say, unforced errors, meaning they were shaped by the president's political judgment and instincts.

There was the tearing and unnecessary war over his health-care proposal and its cost. There was his day-to-day indifference to the views and hopes of the majority of voters regarding illegal immigration. And now the past almost 40 days of dodging and dithering in the face of an environmental calamity. I don't see how you politically survive this.

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen.

Hill and Bill's ragin' Cajun James Carville snarled at the Barackstar, we're about to die down here.

Even a Carter era Dem, The New Yorker's Hendrik Herzberg damns with faint praise:

I don’t have the slightest doubt that the President has been working hard on this crisis from the beginning. It’ll be a while before a judgment can be made about the totality of the Administration’s response, but at the moment it looks like they’ve done a reasonably good job under unreasonably difficult logistical conditions. The comparisons to Bush and Katrina are absurd, but the fact that they are getting any credence at all beyond the Fox News/talk-radio bubble show how poorly the White House has handled the “optics” of it all.

When Chris Matthews and I were speechwriters in the Carter White House, trying to put the best face on intractable inflation, chronic unemployment, and unbudgeable hostage-holding Iranians, our boss used to make frequent reference to how hard he was working and the many meetings he was holding. “If you can’t measure output,” Chris would observe sagely, “measure input.” But that’s only when you don’t really have any other options.

Any FDR comparisons lately?

Our president Barack Obama, with family and Bo in tow, heads back to Chicago for the weekend. The local news today? Unemployment is higher than the national average, Dems who run everything and manage nothing here too have left the state capitol without a budget--just like Dem-run D.C. The Sestak imbroglio reminds everyone of the Blago-Rezko fiasco. Blago, whose trial starts soon. And Rezko, who hasn't been sentenced yet--and no one knows where he is.

Maybe check your wine cellar, Barack.

P.S. I am guest-blogging, along with some other fine bloggers, at Pundit & Pundette this weekend. Lots of great links over there too, as usual.

More. Via TWS:

"The messenger is huge," as one Republican tells Byron York of the White House's deployment of Clinton, "and the message is puny."

Here was White House counsel Bauer in action before as Obama's campaign lawyer--just to give you a flavor of this guy:

The Obama campaign tries to impugn Kurtz's professional integrity by changing the subject to policy debates and quoting partisan hacks in their attack. The Obama campaign lawyer comes out threatening retribution and attempting to silence by intimidation:

Obama campaign lawyer Robert F. Bauer replied: "If someone rides up to a convenience store with a sawed-off shotgun and a prior record, I'm not intimidating anybody by calling the cops. . . . If this [Republican] campaign is going to be run in McCarthyite fashion by lawbreakers in an illegal way, they are going to pay a price.

Employing fascist measures to defend Barack Obama's long political alliance with a confessed terrorist bomber who targeted our troops, cops, and civil servants in the United States of America is a despicable act.

There ya go.

More. The Sestak Smell Test. Daniel Foster, NRO. Don Surber:

Bill Clinton will fall on the sword for Obama. Bill has been impeached before so he knows how to handle it if he is impeached again.

Well, and he already lost his law license, but still makes the big bucks. That must have been some lunch. Maybe he got Obama to promise not to run again (Hey Bill--his promises are about as good as yours, but even so). Hillary's been making noises.

...that gusher is the political jugular.

More. FoxNews via RCP. Video. Jeffrey Lord, TAS: Sestak: Brother Collaborating With White House

Sestak not ready for prime time, that's for sure. Political dead meat.

...as for our President Barack Obama, we shall see. But we know he already stinks.